First Financial Bancorp. (NASDAQ:FFBC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Going forward, we typically see finance leases in that 60%, 70% range, but we are holding the vast majority of the leases going forward, so you may not see that, the leasing income line growing as much as we were seeing when we first had the division. When we look at it, we had about $10.3 million in leasing business income down in the fee income section, and we see that growing by about $1.5 million each quarter here for the next couple quarters, and that’s probably as much of a lens that we have into that at the moment. Typically what we see is the ratio on the fee income side to the expense side is about 1.5 to 1, so then we see the expense side growing by about a million, so we had right around $7 million in leasing business expense, so we see that part growing by about a million each quarter for the next couple quarters.

Brendan Nosal: All right, fantastic. That’s super helpful commentary, Jamie. Thank you. Maybe just one more from me. Can you guys offer a little more color on what drove the increase in NPAs this quarter, as well as the charge-offs that you experienced? Were they both driven by the same two credits you noted were released, and if so, how do you see your reserve for those at this point?

Bill Harrod: Yes, this is Bill Harrod – good morning. The increase in the non-performing assets, as we’ve talked about earlier, was really driven by two borrowers, one on the C&I space, one in the CRE space, which when looking at them, we don’t consider them systematic across our portfolio – they’re very unique circumstances. We’re obviously working through resolutions on both. The C&I credit was really related to management issues, and the CRE credit is a small office that’s been having challenges with their lease rollover. We have–you know, the charge-offs were driven mainly by the write-down of our CRE loan in the non-accrual to bring it down to appraised values, and we are properly reserved on the other.

Brendan Nosal: All right, excellent. Thank you for taking my questions.

Operator: Again if you would like to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Chris McGratty from KBW. Your line is open.

Nick Moutafakis: Hi, this is Nick Moutafakis on for Chris McGratty. Good morning guys.

Archie Brown: Hi Nick.

Nick Moutafakis: Maybe just on deposits, if you bifurcate commercial and retail on the–at least on the non-interest side and the mix as a whole, maybe you can make a comment on how those two segments have bifurcated and the dynamics between commercial and retail. Are you seeing–you know, commercial is already–you’ve already seen the outflows in commercial and then maybe there’s a catch-up in retail, or maybe if you can make a comment on that?

Archie Brown: Yes Nick, this is Archie. I think we show on the one slide, I think it’s 18, you can look at the balance trends there by month. You’ll see pretty much the stabilization that’s occurred during the quarter, really for each of our segments, so personal, public funds and business. At this point, as Jamie said, we’re going to continue to see some mix shift going forward, but we feel like we’re at a place now where deposits are going to grow and we’re kind of in more normal operating cycles with businesses, so. They still have some liquidity. Even in the past quarter, they used some of that to pay some lines down, so we’ll probably see a little bit of pressure on the business NID balances like we’ve seen, but generally they’re going to grow overall and maybe a little more tick-up in the interest bearing side. Jamie’s got another comment.